Captain’s pick: Roger Penske, pictured with driver Will Power in October, hopes to buy or partner an Australian V8 team. Photo: Getty Images

Penske has approached former V8 champion Marcos Ambrose, who is in his ninth season of American stock car racing, to return to lead the proposed Australian expansion of Penske’s racing empire.

The 77-year-old tycoon, known as “The Captain”, owns Team Penske – one of the most successful racing organisations in American motor racing history – and heads Penske Corporation, a multi-billion-dollar, Detroit-based international automotive and transport conglomerate with Australian interests.

Team Penske, based at a huge state-of-the-art racing facility in Mooresville, North Carolina, fields front-running squads in IndyCar open-wheel and NASCAR stock car racing in the US.

Penske hopes to finalise a deal to acquire control of a V8 Supercar team during a visit to his company’s Australian subsidiary later this month.

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“We’re very interested in V8 Supercar,” he told Fairfax Media at the Detroit IndyCar Grand Prix, which is run by a division of Penske Corporation.

“Our goal – if we’re going to do it – is to go (into V8 racing) next year.

“A couple of teams have talked to us, so we have some things in the works. I think it’d be good.”

Penske has been linked to bids for Dick Johnson Racing and Ford Performance Racing, but recent speculation has suggested DJR is the primary target.

V8 legend Dick Johnson, whose Brisbane-based Ford squad was rescued by investors early last year, has been in negotiations since he and his partners met Penske at his Detroit area headquarters last November.

Team Penske president Tim Cindric has been in regular contact with V8 Supercar chief executive James Warburton since his high-profile visit to the season-ending Sydney 500 in early December.

Despite the widespread belief that Penske is poised to complete a takeover of DJR while he is in Australia, he is adamant that talks are not limited to one V8 team or full ownership.

“We have lots of options,” he said. “We have different options. I don’t want to go any further than that. It’s not fair to the guys we’re talking to, because there’s so much (to be discussed).”

Penske emphasised that, while he wanted to enter V8 Supercars to promote his Australian heavy vehicle distributorships, which include the franchise for Western Star trucks, he had not committed to entering V8 racing.

“I have not, no,” he said. “Not at all. I didn’t want to hide from the fact that we’re interested, so I’m saying we are interested. It’s a matter of can we get it together? We’re going to try.”

Penske expects to decide his future in V8 racing during his 10-day visit to Australia, due to begin on June 10.

“I’m going to be out there on business and we’re going to try to get into more of the specific details,” he said. “So I would hope that we’d have some ability to talk officially about what we’re going to do by maybe mid-July at the latest.

“We have to make a decision if we’re going to go (V8 racing in 2015) because we have to get ready.”

Penske, whose interest opens the possibility of V8 Supercars joining the support race program of the Detroit IndyCar GP as part of its renewed interest in overseas races, admitted that he would try to repatriate 2003-04 V8 champion Marcos Ambrose to lead a Team Penske V8 team.

He is waiting to hear if Ambrose is going to re-sign with NASCAR legend Richard Petty’s team, for which the Tasmanian-born racer has driven in the top-tier Sprint Cup since 2011.

“We don’t have a deal with the driver yet,” Penske said. “Ambrose has a deal with Petty, we don’t know where that’s going, but, if we could get him, he brings a lot. I think he’s an elite driver there (in V8s).”

Other factors being weighed by Penske are the likelihood of attracting manufacturer support and major sponsorship.

Because his NASCAR team is backed by Ford – and Cindric travelled to the Sydney 500 with the car-maker’s racing boss Jamie Allison – there has been speculation that a Penske-run V8 squad would take over from FPR as the factory supported team.

But Penske is known to be seeking interest from elsewhere among the 40 makes sold through the Penske Automotive Group, which has car dealerships across the US and in Europe.

Penske is an icon of motor racing in the US, fielding winning teams in a variety of championships for almost 50 years.

He is the most successful team owner in IndyCar history with a record 12 series titles and 15 victories in the Indianapolis 500, another all-time mark.

His Australian driver Will Power has been a contender for the IndyCar title the past four years and is challenging again, sitting second in this year’s points standings coming into the weekend’s Detroit GP on the Belle Isle street circuit.

Although nowhere near as successful, Team Penske’s stock car squad is a force, winning NASCAR's Sprint Cup in 2012 and the Daytona 500 in 2008.